Lawyers for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York on Thursday used President Donald Trump's early-morning rant on "Fox & Friends" to undercut claims being made by attorneys representing his longtime attorney, Michael Cohen.
As documented by legal reporter Mike Scarcella, SDNY lawyers specifically cited Trump's "Fox & Friends" interview in a new filing to argue that most of the records seized in the FBI raid of Cohen's office are not subject to attorney-client privilege.
Specifically, they argued that Trump's comments about Cohen being mostly a "businessman" who only performed a "tiny fraction" of the total legal work done on his behalf suggested "that the seized materials are unlikely to contain voluminous privileged documents."
The lawyers also cited a public statement by Fox News host Sean Hannity that he only asked Cohen for legal advice on an informal basis, which they said undercut Cohen's argument that the raid on his offices contained "thousands, if not millions" of pages of privileged documents.
Trump on Thursday not only said that Cohen did little legal work on his behalf, he also threw his attorney under the bus by saying he has "nothing" to do with any of Cohen's business activities.